Why has there been a sharp decline in medical students who train to perform abortions and doctors who actually perform abortions? Read on to find out.

In the January 2012 issue of Townhall magazine11 Daniel Allott quotes some revealing statistics:

Most OB/GYNs (obstetrics and gynecology) surveyed (only 14%) are willing to perform abortions.

Two-thirds (69%) of metropolitan counties in the United States and 97% of non-metropolitan counties have no abortion provider.2

Why is that? Here are the three main reasons that doctors don’t like to perform abortions:

Abortions don’t save lives or cure people.

Abortion doctors are stigmatized by the profession

The public is increasingly anti-abortion

Abortions don’t save lives or cure people

It’s easy to see why doctors and nurses would be appalled performing abortions. To perform a first trimester abortion you suck the developing baby’s flesh and blood through a tube into a bottle. To perform a second trimester abortion you use forceps to snap the spine and crush the skull and then remove each piece of the baby’s body. The assisting nurse must reassemble the torn pieces of the baby to make sure they didn’t leave any parts inside the womb. Imagine doing this a dozen or more times a day, and you can see why doctors and nurses get demoralized.

One abortion doctor quoted in the article tried to describe the hopelessness he felt, “Is this what the conscientious, dedicated OB- GYN had spent four years in college, four years of medical school, and at least four more years… in residency training to do?” 3

Abortion doctors used to justify themselves by performing abortions in a hospital, not in some back alley, but this no longer is true. Most women use abortions as a form a birth control. Half of the 1.2 million women who annually have an abortion are receiving their second abortion, one quarter their third abortion, and fifteen percent their fourth abortion.

Abortion doctors are stigmatized by their profession

Most doctors want to keep it a secret that they perform abortions. As a result, 94% of all abortions are not performed in hospitals but in stand-alone clinics such as Planned Parenthood. They earn $155 million from performing 332,000 abortions per year.

The public is increasingly anti-abortion

Doctors are also stigmatized because the public has become more prolife recently. Gallup reports that 45% of Americans in 2011 consider themselves pro-life compared to 33% in 1996. Young people in particular are more prolife than ever. As a result, 1.21 million abortions were performed in 2008 compared to 1.61 million in 1990.4

Why has the public become more prolife? Today, women can see their babies in the womb more clearly through high resolution and multidimensional ultrasound imaging. 75% of women change their mind once they see their baby on ultrasound. They can see the child kicking his feet and even sucking his thumb.

You can sum up why doctors don’t like performing abortions: It’s wrong. The public is catching on. Let’s continue the fight against abortions.

To Read More

Daniel Allott, A Dying Practice: The abortion industry is struggling to reconcile its existence with truths about the procedure that even its members find difficult to deny (Townhall, January 2012)

References

Daniel Allott, A Dying Practice: The abortion industry is struggling to reconcile its existence with truths about the procedure that even its members find difficult to deny (Townhall, January 2012)